What had happened was this: the Gray Gentleman had sent his elderly black “boy” with a note to the vine-covered house in Mt. Vernon Place and had requested “the favor of Miss Beulah’s company upon a drive, that morning. He intended to visit one of the ‘Playgrounds’ in the south-western part of the city, and he felt that the little girl whose society he so greatly enjoyed would find much to interest her, if she might be with him.”
To this he had signed a name which was quite powerful enough to secure Mrs. McClure’s instant and delighted assent; and she had at once returned a very graceful note of acceptance by the “boy.”
Then at ten o’clock precisely, the Gray Gentleman’s carriage had gone around for “Miss McClure,” and she had been lifted into it and to a seat beside her friend. A half-hour’s drive followed; through streets and avenues which Bonny-Gay had never seen before, and which continually grew narrower and more crowded. Even the houses seemed to shrink in size, and the little girl had finally exclaimed:
“Why, it’s like the buildings were so little that they just squeeze the folks out of them, upon the steps and through the windows. I never, never saw! Will they get to be just playhouses, by-and-by?”
“No, Bonny-Gay, I’m sure you never did. Yet it’s the same city in which is your own big home, and they are just the same sort of human beings as you and I.”
“Are they? It doesn’t—doesn’t just seem so, does it? And why do they all stare at us like that?”
“Because we do at them, maybe; and it’s not a common thing to see carriages with liveried attendants pass this way. I suppose you, in your dainty clothes, are as much a ‘show’ to them as they to you in their coarse attire, or rags.”
Bonny-Gay looked thoughtfully at her frock. She would have preferred to wear a simpler one; and a comfortable “Tam” instead of the feathered hat which adorned her sunny head. But her mother had decided otherwise; since the Gray Gentleman had done her the honor of that morning it was but courtesy to show appreciation of it by a good appearance.
After a moment she looked up and observed:
“It’s the queerest thing! I feel as if I ought to get out and walk; and as if I should give this hat to that little girl who hasn’t any.”